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Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Not much to say today except what the title says. We call it social distancing, but that is wrong. We are, and should be, physically distancing ourselves from others. Socially, however, we should be close. And that is definitely possible these days. Ask anybody in a long-distance relationship, with a disability, with 100 friends in the raid-guild, with an active Tik-tok presence, even with a decent amount of pen-friends or involved in mail-chess: physical distance is not social distance.

I have spent more than 20 years studying Internet user by now, and this actually pretty much sums it up. Online and digital communication is real. Friends who show up to raid with you on time are real friends. The people who bother to cheer you on in your fifteenth update of your crocheting adventures are really happy for you. They are not socially distant, they are socially present, even if they may be physically distant.

So get on the phone, computer, or your neglected stationary set, and get socially closer. And if you are among those who still make money: do some mail-order local shopping too. They need our business.

About Me

This is the journal of Torill Elvira Mortensen. I am an associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. The topics of my writings here are among other things media studies, reader-response theory, role-play games, Internet Culture, travel, academic weirdness and online communication - put together at random.
Google scholar page.

Personal Publication and Public Attention, Torill Elvira Mortensen (2004): "Personal Publication and Public attention", in Gurak, Laura, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff and Jessica Reyman (ed): Into the Blogosphere; Rhetoric, Community and Culture of Weblogs, at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/, University of Minnesota.

Pleasures of the Player (pdf), Torill Elvira Mortensen (2003): Pleasures of the Player; Flow and control in online games, Doctoral Dissertation Volda College and University of Bergen.

Other useful sites

The Gamers' Space

The Gamers' Space is a small project I am doing in the spring 2009. It includes an electronic survey, pictures of game machines of different kinds, and interviews done at The Gathering, a large LAN party in Hamar, Norway. For participation, more information, links and addresses, check The Gamers' Space.